Sunday, 21 October 2012

Although
we were boyfriend and girlfriend for four long months, I never fancied let
alone loved Bob Kennedy. Obviously he didn’t know that I was using him as a
stepping stone to catch his best mate. But you believe what you want to believe
in life. Bob Kennedy definitely believed I was in love with him. He never told
me he loved me – which was a relief – but he used to enjoy telling any company
we were in how I was madly in love with him. But I prefer my men tall. Bob Kennedy was
two inches shorter than me. He was small elsewhere too, but that’s just me
getting all bitchy over what he did to me. But I’ll come to that in a minute. I
should have dumped Bob Kennedy after the first week. He wasn’t funny, he loved
himself, he acted the big man when we both knew where it mattered, he was a
little boy – whoops, there I go again!

I just didn’t have the heart to finish
with him. I also needed to keep the connection with Shane. Because even though
I was working alongside his sister, the situation with me wanting to go out
with Shane seemed so near but forever out of reach. So I stuck with Bob Kennedy.
Hoping that Shane would soon realise what a jerk his best friend was and make
his move. I just wanted him to make his move, grab me while we were in the pub
and Bob Kennedy was in the toilets and tell me he wanted me. But then something bad happened.

It was Bob Kennedy’s birthday, this
now being the Wednesday after the clocks went back, and he called me as I was
getting ready to go and pick him up. We were going into town, to the Vue cinema
to see the new James Bond film. I can’t stand James Bond and had already
accepted that it was going to be a long boring night; I was only going because
he had agreed to pay the £17 for our tickets and a KFC afterwards.

So, as I was standing there in my
bedroom in my jeans and bra and holding my white Nike trainers and pondering
what else to add, he sent me a text message and before I could read it, he
called.

Bob Kennedy sounded anxious, said he
was going to drive over, that I was definitely not to leave, come over in my
car. As I had clearly got the message not to pick him up, I asked Bob Kennedy
what was happening.

‘Does this mean no Skyfall?’ I
said, hopefully.

Bob Kennedy would not say, but he did
say something else. He had something important he wanted to talk about. Not
over the phone. Face to face. He wanted to be honest with me. Truly honest. I
knew exactly by his nervous tone that it was something serious. I almost collapsed with worry while he
was on his way round to my house. I knew precisely what he was going to say,
what he was going to ask me to accept. On one knee, on his birthday.

Oh how I felt so sick! Yes, I
definitely felt sick. Even sicker now that I remember how it all played out. I had opened the front door before he had
even got out of his Mini. I was that terrified of Bob Kennedy proposing to me
in front of my parents I was almost running on tiptoe to meet him. My parents
had to be kept at a distance. A complete disaster that would have been. Them
and Bob Kennedy mortified by my gloomy reaction. Oh how mum and dad love Bob Kennedy.

I felt so mean and cruel and I swear
on my life that I so didn’t want to break the poor little boy’s heart. And I
told him so. Told him how I wasn’t ready for marriage. I mean, we were both so
young; we’d only been going out for four months.

I was expecting the bottom of his
mouth to fall down like a castle draw bridge, and then the tears and the
begging to follow.

But that never happened.

What happened next, was he frowned.

I immediately stopped crying, perhaps
I even felt somewhat foolish. But I never expected what he was about to tell me
about. How he had been seeing Shane’s sister Susan’s best friend, Tessa. For
about three weeks. The period of time that I had decided to stop sex between us
as my plan was to encourage Bob Kennedy to look elsewhere so that I wouldn’t
have to break his heart by finishing with him. I knew that I had to make a move
on Shane soon or it would never happen. But now, even though me and Bob Kennedy
were apparently now finished, this was inexcusable. This was wrong. I had been
so severely wronged!

Some minutes later and with me still
in tears and now sat in what was still my seat – I had left the door open
though – and unable to convey my frustration and hurt, while thinking about him
screwing Tessa behind my back as he bleated on like he was somehow in the
right!

‘Laura, you’re not listening to me.
The way you have been with me for the past six weeks, you made it clear on more
than one occasion that I wasn’t making you happy.’

What? What! Who did he think he was?
Finishing with me, cheating on me behind my back while telling the world how I
loved him! How dare he! Cheat on me! The little bastard!

I then realised something both
terrible and disgusting at the same time. The seat, my seat, the one I was sat
on, and how Tessa had been sitting on it too. Tessa on my seat like it was now
her throne? That would mean, that would mean…

‘You shagged her in this car, haven’t
you? You fucking well have – you have you swine!’

I leapt out and wasted no time in
getting my dad outside on account of all my hysterical screaming.

Bob Kennedy, the rat, the weasel, the
maggot, the cheating bastard, well he just couldn’t have got away any faster,
he must have burnt out the tread on his tyres, escaping that speedily, in fear
of my dad.

I was distraught.

With his arm around me, dad lead me
indoors and mum made me a strong Irish Coffee and told me to let it all out.
Which I did. I told them what had happened. What I had just found out and also
about how I had wasted thirty five pounds on a red Ben Sherman polo shirt for
his birthday while also being denied an opportunity to see the new James Bond.

Dad said I deserved better, that I was
still young and right now all I needed to do was to think about myself, not
him, look after number one; how I would definitely go on to meet someone better
and that this had all happened for a good reason. He also offered to go and see
James Bond with me. I politely declined, said how James Bond would forever
remind me of that two-timing cheat Bob Kennedy and that both him and James Bond
were definitely now to be avoided; forgotten about forever more.